The Lord is showing me just how utterly dependent on Him I truly am. He shows me again and again, yet in my sinfulness, I try to hide the truth and “come out on top,” as if I somehow didn’t “really” need God after all. Or, maybe I need Him for my salvation…but that’s it and I can handle “the rest”. It’s like I’m saying “Thanks for saving me, God! I can take it from here. No, really – thanks!…Talk to you on Sunday – bye!” It’s a sick and twisted dance with darkness in my heart. How easily I forget that trying to handle “the rest” on my own is exactly why I need salvation in the first place!

Oh, how disgusting self-reliance and Pride honstly is – and how cruely it insults the Cross upon which my God died for me and for that same sin.

The picture that comes to my mind is that of a rock climber. He carries a hammer and metal spikes which he drives into the rock so that he can securely feed his rope, his safety line, to prevent his own demise. He trusts in his own spikes, his hammer, his rope, his ability, skill, and strength – he sees no alternative. As he climbs the rock, he continually strikes the spike with the hammer, again and again. Every time he hammers the spike into the rock, blood gushes forth from the rock and flows down. The climber’s spikes have always made the ruddy, calloused rock bleed. But the climber is immune, through habit, to his infliction upon the rock. In focusing on his spikes, his hammer, and his skills, the climber has missed the big picture – something much bigger than him and his spikes; the Rock itself. He did not see that the Rock was Jesus Christ and that he was nailing his spikes into Jesus’s hand…and yet, the hand that received the nails was the same hand holding that climber, and the only singular reason he had not fallen to his death. This is what it looks like to try to pridefully climb over God and exalt oneself.

In my sinfulness, I despise the idea of my own wretchedness and need for a Savior – just further proof of my need! Unfortunately, I rarely despise my own verified wretchedness enough to throw myself down before God in contrition. But that’s what He desires.

Isaiah 57:15 says “I dwell in a high and holy place and with him who is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble and to revive the heart of the contrite.”

I am considering these things:

My indebtedness to God is always growing.

A mark of growth in godliness is an increasing consciousness of this growing debt and its significance.

This debt cannot be repayed – I (and no one else) can ever repay God. Psalm 50:10–12; Acts 17:25

I will never be truly self-reliant, and to think I am is a great error and sin.

If I think of heaven as a place where I won’t have to rely on God, I’ve got it all backwards.

My indebtedness to God is always growing.

This is true in the sense that I continue to sin, God save me! And yet, it is also true that because I’ve broken one part of the Law, the whole Law has been broken and I cannot be more guilty than I am, for I am “utterly depraved”. As a Christian who has received the Holy Spirit, I have no excuse for sinning, for it is now possible, by His grace alone living in me, not to sin any longer. And therefore when I sin, it is (or should be to me anyhow) a greater offense, because it takes a deeper stab at the Gospel.

A mark of growth in godliness is an increasing consciousness of this growing debt and its significance.

As I understand more fully that I am disposed to either the fullness of the wrath or mercy of God – as both are given FULLY (God finishes what He starts and is a God of completeness) – and as I see my sin, and then see the Cross and understand that my Savior fully absorbed God’s wrath for me, my faith grows and my spirit is revived to trust in Him as my Only Hope and Salvation.

This debt cannot be repaid – I (and no one else) can ever repay God. Psalm 50:10–12; Acts 17:25

How GLAD I am that God has not asked ME to repay the debt I owe, for it would be impossible to do so. Those who are not saved by grace alone through faith alone will enter Hell once and for all, to be tormented for eternity, and their torment will never cease, for their iniquity (equal to my own) is so great that in all eternity it cannot be repaid by human suffering. Perhaps a wrong against man can be made “right” to some extent – an eye may be lost to the offender who caused the loss of another man’s eye. Yet a sin against a HOLY God can never be forgiven through human suffering (because we are sinful and therefore deserve suffering). That’s why God had to become a man – first so that there would be a sinless man on earth (who would HAVE to be God in order to be sinless); and so that He (Jesus Christ) as God-man could bear the full weight of the furious WRATH and HATRED of God against sin (while still not sinning!) for those He chose to save.

I will never be truly self-reliant, and to think I am is a great error and sin.

How true. I rely on God for every breath, heartbeat, movement, the ability to form a thought, word, and even exist. Why would I not depend on Him equally for Salvation? How could any substitution come from ME? It’s impossible. And that’s why Salvation itself IS POSSIBLE.

If I think of heaven as a place where I won’t have to rely on God, I’ve got it all backwards.

Sometimes when I think about heaven, I think I’ll be free from “God having to help me.” But oh, that’s so totally backwards! When I get to heaven and I am glorified, I will no longer think of freedom as being set alone and apart from God – what horror the suggestion of such a thought should incur in my heart! for being “set apart from God” and “alone” is the definition of Hell; separation from the kindness of God – but I will think of freedom as being set apart from sin! I will think of joy and happiness as being fully bound-up in Christ! I will want nothing more than to be FULLY DEPENDENT on Him alone, in gratitude for all He’s done for me. And I will no longer desire to be self-dependent.

Practicing for Paradise

I want to practice that mindset now, however. Join me, will you? We are dependent on God for our salvation, whether our arrogant pride likes it or not. Our own works cannot save us – they only damn us. But He pours out the FULLNESS of His MERCY on us as we depend on Him, and He saves us from ourselves.

Do you know Jesus Christ? Are you His and not your own? Do you depend on Him for your salvation and not your own works? If you’ve not trusted in Him for your eternal salvation; if you’ve not believed that He is Lord of Lord and will judge all men on the last day, and that you are accountable to Him for your sin…then you are in a truly terrible position before a Holy God and I pray that He will bring you to a place of repentance and brokenness for the purpose of raising you up and showing you to be perfected in Christ’s righteousness (not a righteousness of your own making) on that Day. If you have not accepted Christ as your Only Hope, your Only Savior, and you’ve read part or all of this page, please stop what you’re doing right now and talk to God; this is His call to you.